Catching Up

Yes I am officially a terrible blogger. My updates have been hampered by a distinct lack of access to 'the big computer', although I have been managing (just) to keep on top of social media via phones etc.
 
If you are vaguely interested in keeping up with what I'm up to, mainly on a business/craft level, you can follow me:
Twitter @madebydolly
Instagram @laylambd
Facebook www.facebook.com/madebydolly 
 
or indeed on Google+

Anyway, onto the tadpolios.

Our tadpole experiment went very well, and up until they turned into froglets we had successfully kept them happy and alive. Until the beginning of June.....

As it turns out, the froglet stage is tricky. Unless you provide them with enough places to get out, they are actually very easy to drown. They need to breath air, and are very fragile. They can get trapped, and they will insist on looking for the waters edge in the tank. As soon as I realised that they were in distress I changed the whole tank layout by taking out alot of the water and pushing all the gravel to the sides, leaving the large pebbles in the middle, so that where ever they swam to, they could climb out of the water. Still, we lost one, which was a sad thing to have happen at the breakfast table. Still, as inexperienced froglet nannies, I was pleased we realised soon enough to keep the others going. After that, they kept climbing up the aquarium walls, and we had to release them into the overgrown area next to the pond they came from. I cried! I have been there a lot since but seen no frogs. I hope some of the little guys make it to adulthood.

On a professional level May/June has been a rather exciting couple of months, you may have seen me on TV and not realised. Watch this space as I will have to put up a post all about that in a little while.

Bye for now x 

More new additions and Introduction to TADCAM

As if our menagerie weren't large enough, our oldest daughter is always 'finding' new pets for us, Gerald Durrell style ( if you have read My Family and Other Animals you will know what I mean).

So last week we found ourselves to be the proud owners of an aquarium full of tadpoles. As she, thankfully, has been researching how to create an environment in which the little things are likely to survive, we were only subjected to 6. Also, before you ask! They are from our own pond, which is pretty deep so I'd rather they weren't hanging around it trying to observe the tadpoles in their natural habitat every 5 minutes. Particularly my accident prone 2 year old. 

I find them fascinating, but lets be realistic, any pet an 8 year old brings home is basically going to be looked after by the adults minimum 80% of the time. Also, she mysteriously has homework whenever it comes to cleaning tanks etc as I found out when we used to keep snails. Funny, she never mentions the homework at TV time, or when the weather is sunny, or at the weekend.

Now our wriggly little friends are living the high life in the kitchen, and I will keep you updated as they grow into tiny adorable, slimy, escapy (supress thought) froglets.

TADLOG 1

Tadpole Status: black blobs with "evil eyes" apparently. Long tails, little wiggly nubs where the legs will be

Food: boiled lettuce chopped fine and frozen daphnia which the man in the fish shop conned me into buying advised me to feed them